From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign Part 12

It was afterwards, that perhaps a presentiment was given him that this was his last march, with the battery, he had fought so often, and loved so much; and _this_ saddened, and softened his usually bold, soldierly spirit, and bearing. I walked and talked with him a good deal that afternoon, and certainly I was struck by a quietness of manner, and a gentleness of speech, not at all usual with him. But we did not know what it meant _then_! So we cheerily swung along that silent road, to meet what was coming to him, and to us, in the unseen way ahead.

About five o'clock we pulled out of the road we had been travelling, and followed a narrow farm road, across a wide, open field, toward a farmhouse, on its farther edge. Beyond the house was a large pine wood, which stopped all view in that direction. As we pa.s.sed across that field, we saw some other artillery, coming from another direction, and converging with us upon that farmhouse. When we drew close together, we discovered that these fellows were the Second and Third Companies of the "Richmond Howitzers." Our Company, the First, had been separated from them at the beginning of the war, and they had never met, before now. A little while after, at this spot, the three batteries, "First," "Second"

and "Third Richmond Howitzers" went into battle side by side, for the first, and _only_ time, during the war. There was great interest felt by the boys that we should go into one fight _together_; but before we went in, the Battalion was broken up again, and scattered, to different parts of the line.

When we got near this farmhouse, all was quiet! We had not seen, or heard of any enemy for many hours, and we did not know where anybody was; didn't even know "where we were _at_" _ourselves_. The farm road ran past the house, round the barn and on toward that pine woods behind the house.

We halted just by the house, and got some water, at the well, and stood around and wondered what we were here for. There were some cherry trees, with ripe cherries on them, and up them the boys swarmed, Leigh Robinson gallantly leading the way, to enjoy the fruit.

We were thus engaged, when the deep quiet of this rural scene was suddenly, and rudely broken! Over beyond that wood just by us, there burst out a terrific roar of musketry! It was like a clap of thunder out of a clear sky! We did not know any troops were near us, and had no idea that the enemy was in ten miles of us.

But there right through those pines the musketry was rolling, and cracking now! A few cannon shots joined in, and the Confederate "yell"

rose up out of the thunder of battle. And the bullets began to sing around us. The cherry trees were quickly deserted by all, but Leigh Robinson. He stayed up there with b.a.l.l.s whizzing close to him, and calmly picked and ate cherries,--as if these were humming birds sporting about him,--until he had enough, or more likely, the cherries gave out.

Not knowing who was fighting beyond the woods, or what might come of it, we got the guns into battery, facing the woods, to be ready for what might be.

In a few minutes we saw Colonel Goggin, of Kershaw's staff, dash out of the woods, and gallop toward us. He told us that it was Kershaw's Division over there. They had been attacked by heavy lines of the enemy; that our line was broken, and captured at one point, and that Kershaw wanted some guns, just as quick as they could get to him. Our two "Napoleons" were ordered in. Goggin said "for heaven's sake come at double quick;" the need was very urgent. We cannoneers of the Left Section had the guns limbered up, and into the woods, in about a minute; we, double-quicking alongside. We went by a narrow wood road, which entering the woods straight ahead of us, went obliquely to the left down a deep ravine, crossed a little stream, and up the hill, into the open field beyond.

Pa.s.sing through that pine wood was a mean job! The Minie b.a.l.l.s were slapping the pines all about us, with that venomous sound, with which a Minie crashes into green pine wood. It is a mean piece of work anyhow, to go from the rear up to a fighting line! But, away we went, excited and eager to get through, and see what was going on. The road, cut through the steep banks down to the stream, was so very narrow that it barely admitted our wheels, and when they went farther down the cut, our hubs stuck in the bank, on both sides, and the gun was held fast. From this point the road ran straight up to the edge of the wood. We could see men running about, and yelling, and shooting in the open ground. We could not tell whether they were our men or the enemy, and the fear seized us that the enemy might be pressing our people back, and would catch us, helpless and useless, in this ridiculous fix.

Gracious! how the driver did whip, and spur! and how the cannoneers did strain, and tug at those wheels! Captain McCarthy jumped off his horse, and put his powerful strength to the wheel. The men from the other guns joined us, and, at last, when we were nearly wild with excitement, we gave one tremendous jerk, all together, and lifted the whole thing bodily out of that rut, and over the bank. The horses, as excited now, as we were, s.n.a.t.c.hed the gun over the bank, across the stream, nearly upsetting it, and then went tearing, at a full gallop, up the hill; we running at top speed to keep up. The third gun following. At this pace, we dashed into the open field, and were upon the battle ground. We ran the guns into the line of battle, along a slight work Kershaw's men had hurriedly thrown up, just to the left of the part of the line which the Federals had taken, and were still holding. We pushed up, until we got an enfilade fire upon their lines. A few case-shots screaming down their line sent them flying out of that, and our line was restored.

The Colonel of one of their regiments, captured by our men, said that his regiment was lying down behind our captured line, and one of our sh.e.l.ls cut down a large pine tree and threw it on his line, and about finished up what was left of his regiment. The sh.e.l.l burst just as it struck the tree, and the sh.e.l.l fragments, and falling tree together, killed twelve or fifteen men, and wounded a number of others.

The fighting was dying down now, and soon ceased. Our line restored, the enemy made no further effort to take it. The rest of the time, till dark, was taken up with sharp-shooting, and artillery fire. A farmhouse and outbuildings and barn stood right behind our position, and, I remember, the barn swallows in large numbers were skimming and twittering all around, through the sweet, bright air, while sh.e.l.ls and b.a.l.l.s were singing a very different sort of song. I never saw that sight during the war but this once,--birds flying about in the midst of a battle. But here, those dear little swallows circled round, and round that barn, and the adjoining field, for hours, while the air was full of flying missiles. They did not seem to mind it. Perhaps they wondered what on earth was going on. It was a curious scene!

During the night we made some little addition to the slight earth work, which the infantry had thrown up, in front of our two guns. Infantry began to pile into the line on both sides of our guns; we learned that this was the Twentieth South Carolina Regiment, Colonel Keitt, who had been killed, in a fight the Regiment had been in, that afternoon.

This regiment, at this time when some Brigades in the Army of Northern Virginia had not more than one thousand or twelve hundred men, came among us with seventeen hundred men ready for duty. The regiment had been stationed at Fort Sumter; had seen nothing of war except the siege of a Fort, and their idea of the chief duty of a soldier was,--to get as much earth between him and the enemy as possible. When they came into line this night, and saw this slight bank of dirt,--about two feet thick, and three feet high,--and learned that we expected, certainly, to fight behind it in the morning, they were perfectly aghast! They pitched in, and began to "throw dirt." They kept it up all night, and by morning had a wall of earth in front of them, in many places eight feet high, and six to seven feet thick.

How much higher, and thicker they would have got it, if the enemy had not interrupted them, gracious only knows! Of course they couldn't begin to shoot over it, except at _the sky_; perhaps they thought _anything blue_ would do to shoot at and the sky was blue. But it was a fact, that when the enemy advanced next morning, this big regiment was positively "Hors du Combat."

It is true, that when we woke up at daylight, and found what they had done, we jeered, and laughed at them, and showed them the impossibility of fighting from behind that wall, until some of them got ashamed, and began to shovel down the top, a little. Captain McCarthy sent to let General Kershaw know the absurd situation we were in,--supported by infantry that could not fire a shot, and warning him, that if the enemy charged, they would certainly take the line, unless our two guns alone could hold it. General Kershaw sent orders to them "to shovel that thing down to a proper height," but they didn't have time to do it. When the fight began some of them had cut out a shelf on the inside of the bank, and some of them had gotten boxes and logs and a number stood up on them, and did some shooting, and behaved gallantly; but many of them seeming to think that a man should be "rewarded according to his works"

laid closely down behind that wall, and never stirred.

The next night General Lee took them out of the lines, and gave them picks, and shovels, and made a "sapping and mining corps" of them,--the military service they were most fitted for, and they _were_ rewarded according to their works.

While these beavers were gallantly wielding the pick and shovel, we, satisfied with our little bank of dirt, were getting ready for next day's work, by a good sound sleep. One of our boys did have misgiving about the strength of our defences. He went in the night, and woke up Sergeant Moncure and said, "Monkey, don't you think these works are very thin?" "Yes, Tom, they are," he replied. "You just get a spade, and go and make them just as thick as you think they ought to be; Good night!"

He resumed his slumbers, and Tom, not an overly energetic person, walked away grumbling that "the work _was_ too thin, but he would be derned if _he_ was going out there, in the dark to work on them, all by himself,"

which he didn't.

Somehow when we lay down this night we had gotten the impression that things were going to be rough, in the morning. They were!

Just as the day dawn was struggling through the clouds, we were roused by the sound of several guns, fired in quick succession. We were on our feet instantly, and saw that all was ready for action. Sh.e.l.ls came howling at us from batteries that we could discern in the dim light. We could see the light of their burning fuses, as they started out of their guns, and could trace their flight toward us by that. Some of them would strike the ground in front, and ricochet over us; some would crash into our work, with a terrific _thud_, and some went screaming over our heads,--very close, too, and went on to the rear to look after our Right Section guns, which were still by that farmhouse, where we had left them, the evening before. They knocked down several of the shelter tents our boys were sleeping under, and several of our fellows, there, had the narrowest kind of an escape. One sh.e.l.l "caromed" over three of the men, who were sleeping side by side, touching the very blanket that was over them. The Right Section boys needed no reveille that morning to get them out! They tumbled up with great promptness and moved round out of the line of fire. Fortunately none of them were actually hurt, just here.

One fellow was sleeping with several canteens of water hanging right over his head. A bullet went through them. He was nearly drowned!

=The Bloodiest Fifteen Minutes of the War=

In our front, this artillery fire kept up for a while, then it stopped!

The next moment, there was an awful rush! From every quarter their infantry came pouring on over the fields, and through the woods, yelling and firing, and coming at a run. Their columns seemed unending! Enough people to sweep our thin lines from the face of the earth! Up and down our battle line, the fierce musketry broke out. To right and left it ran, crashing and rolling like the sound of a heavy hail on a tin roof, magnified a thousand times, with the cannon pealing out in the midst of it like claps of thunder. Our line, far as the eye could reach, was ablaze with fire; and into that furious storm of death, the blue columns were swiftly urging their way.

Straight in our front one ma.s.s was advancing on us and we were hurling case-shot through their ranks,--when, suddenly! glancing to the right, we saw another column, which had rushed out of the woods on our right front, by the flank, almost upon us, not forty-five yards outside our line. Instantly we turned our guns upon them with double canister! Two or three shots doubled up the head of that column. It resolved itself into a formless crowd, that still stood stubbornly there, but could not get one step farther. And then, for three or four minutes, at short pistol range, the infantry and our Napoleon guns tore them to pieces. It was deadly, and b.l.o.o.d.y work! They were a helpless mob, now; a swarming mult.i.tude of confused men! They were falling by scores, hundreds! The ma.s.s was simply melting away under the fury of our fire. Then, they broke in panic, and headlong rout!

Many fearing to retreat under that deadly fire, dropped down behind the stumps near our line, and when the others had gone, we ordered them to come in. Several hundred prisoners were captured in this way. To show what our works were,--I saw one tall fellow jump up from behind a stump, run to our work, and with "a hop, skip, and a jump," he leaped entirely over it, and landed inside our line. And a foolish looking fellow he was, when he picked himself up!

Just as the enemy broke, Ben Lambert, "No. 1" at "4th" gun, was severely wounded, in the right arm, just as he raised it to swab his gun. One of the boys took his place, and the fire kept on.

The great a.s.sault was over and had failed! Only ten or fifteen minutes was its fury raging! In that ten minutes, thirteen thousand Federal soldiers lay stricken, with death, or wounds. In those few moments, Grant lost nearly as many men as the whole British Army lost in the entire battle of Waterloo.

Just to our right the enemy got over our works, and the guns right and left of the break were turned on them. We heard a "yell" behind us, and round a piece of pines came Eppa Hunton's Brigade of Virginians, at a run; General Eppa on horse-back leading them in, at a gallop. The Virginians delivered their volley at the Federals inside our lines, then sprang on them like tigers. Next minute the few, left of them, were flying back over the works.

In the thick of the fight, Barksdale's Mississippi Brigade, now commanded by General Humphreys, to which our Battery had been attached, being unengaged just at that time, heard that the infantry supporting us was not effective, and that the "Howitzers" were in danger of being run over. They requested permission to come to our help, and two Regiments came tearing down the lines to our position, manned the line by us, and went to work. What work these splendid fellows could do in a fight! We had been very uneasy about our supports, and were delighted to see the Mississippians, especially, as they had voluntarily come to our help, in such a handsome manner.

The spectacle in front of our line was simply _sickening_! The horrible heaps of dead lay so ghastly, and the wounded were so thickly strewn all over the field. To right, and to left, out in front, along our line, as far as we could see, this dreadful array of the dead and wounded stretched! It was pitiful to see the wounded writhing, and to hear their cries of agony. And here _again_, as at Spottsylvania, these wounded were left between the lines, to perish miserably, of hunger and thirst, and mortifying wounds.

=Federal Troops Refuse to Be Slaughtered=

When, a few days after, Grant sent to look after them they were nearly all dead. What they must have suffered before death came! But none of their own people seemed to care, and no effort was made to help them,--when they might have been saved. I wonder who will have to answer for the _unnecessary waste of life_ and suffering in the "Army of the Potomac?" For the untold agony and death that _need never have been_! It was awful! We used to think it was _brutal_! And the _Federal soldiers_ thought so too!

Some hours after this a.s.sault we saw the enemy ma.s.sing for another.

Their columns advanced a little way, and then stopped. We could see there was some "hitch," and sent a few sh.e.l.ls over there, just to encourage any little reluctance they might have about coming on. These lines stood still, and came no further.

We learned, afterwards, that perfectly demoralized, and disheartened by the b.l.o.o.d.y repulse of the morning, the Federal troops, when ordered by General Grant to storm our line again, _mutinied in line of battle_, and _in the face of the enemy and refused to go forward_. I witnessed that performance, but did not understand at the time, just what was going on.

The grave meaning of it was, that the enemy's soldiers had distinctly quailed before our lines and declared their utter inability to take them. And _this_ was the verdict--at the end--of General Grant's Army upon General Grant's campaign! Their heads were more level than their General's. They were tired of being slaughtered for nothing!

The moment the morning a.s.sault was over, the Federal artillery opened furiously, all along the line, and all day long, we were under a constant fire of cannon, and sharp-shooters.

Fifty yards behind our guns was a farmhouse, outbuildings, and yard full of trees. Sh.e.l.ls aimed at us, rained into those premises all day. The house was riddled like a sieve, the trees were cut down, and the outbuildings, barn, stables, sheds, etc., were reduced to a heap of kindling wood.

A pig was in a pen, in the yard! Everything else on the place had been hit, and we watched with interest the fate of that pig. He escaped all day! Just after dark, a sh.e.l.l skimmed just over our gun, went screaming back into that yard, burst,--and--we heard the pig squeal. Some of the men, at once, started for the yard, and came back with the pig. Said "he was mortally wounded, and they were going to carry him to the hospital."

I fear he did not survive to get there! We disposed of his remains in the usual way.

About noon we heard that our Right Section had been ordered into position, on the lines, some distance to our right, and that John Moseley, No. 8 at 1st gun, while with his caisson, back of the lines, had been killed. A stray bullet had pierced his brain. No one was with him at the time. He was found dead, in the woods.

=Dr. Carter "Apologizes for Getting Shot"=

The sharp-shooters swept all the ground about us, making it dangerous for any man to expose himself an instant. Dr. Carter took some canteens, and his cup, and went round under the hill behind us, to bring some water. With filled canteens, and tin cup, filled to the brim, carried in his right hand, he recklessly came back across the field, in rear of the line. Just before he got to us, a bullet struck his right thumb, and shattered it. He did not drop the cup or spill the water! He came right on, as if nothing had happened, offered us a drink of water out of the cup, and then courteously apologized to the captain for getting shot; who accepted his apology, and sent him off to the hospital, to have his thumb amputated; which he did, and was back at his post, the first moment his wound permitted. When we condoled with him for the loss of his thumb, he said "_He_ didn't care anything about the _thumb_; he could _roll cigarettes just as well with the stump_, as he ever could with the whole thumb. That seemed about all the use he had for his thumb,--to roll cigarettes. He was an artist at that!

In the afternoon three or four of us were standing in a group talking when one of the numberless sh.e.l.ls that were howling by all day long, burst in our very faces. I distinctly felt the heat of the explosion on my skin, and grains of powder out of the bursting sh.e.l.l struck our faces, and drew blood. The concussion was terrific! It was a pretty "close call" to all three of us!

The stream of sh.e.l.ls fired at our guns gradually cut away the top of our work, until it was so low that it did not sufficiently protect our gun.

We feared that some of the sh.e.l.ls would strike our gun, and disable it.

To avert this, for many hours that day, from time to time, we had to take turns, and, with shovels, throw sand from the inside on the top of the work. In this way we managed to keep our defences up, but it was weary work, and we grew very tired. Still, there was nothing for it, but to keep on, and _we kept_ on!

=Death of Captain McCarthy=

About six o'clock, there fell the saddest loss, to the battery, that it had yet been called to bear. Captain McCarthy stood up at the work to watch what was going on in front. One moment, I saw him, standing there;--the next instant, I heard a sharp crash, the familiar sound of a bullet striking, and McCarthy was lying, flat on his back, and motionless. We jumped to his side! Nothing to be done! A long bullet from a "globe sight" rifle had struck him, two inches over his right eye, and crashed straight through his brain. He lay without motion two or three minutes, then his chest rose, and fell, gently, once or twice, and he was still, in death.

And there, on that red field of war, with sh.e.l.ls, and bullets whistling all about, over his dead face, dropped the tears of brave men, who loved him well, and had fought with and followed him long! We had seen his superb courage in battle; his patient bearing of hardship, his unfaltering devotion to duty always; his kind, cordial comradeship! We knew him to be a soldier, every inch, and a patriot to his heart's core!